In the study, published in the Economic and Political Weekly, Bheemeshwar Reddy and others show that general category EWS students are already well-represented in India’s top educational institutions. The authors analyze student data from 445 higher education institutions ranked by the National Institutional Ranking Framework of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). They find that of all the 1.6 million students enrolled in these institutions in 2016-17, 28% (455,000) belonged to the economically backward class.
This representation is nearly three times the proposed reservation of 10% - even after using a stricter definition of economic backwardness. The authors highlight that most institutions use a cut-off ranging from ₹2 lakh to ₹5.5 lakh household annual income to define economic backwardness. This is far lower than the government’s reservation cut-off of ₹8 lakh.
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